Tuesday, March 27, 2012

We've followed Pat Summitt's career from the beginning. We were both students at the University of Tennessee when it all started.

Charlotte remembers talking to the women's basketball team while they were selling donuts to raise money for their travel and uniforms. The team set up at a table outside Alumni Hall, a physical education facility where they played because they did not have their own gymnasium in which to practice or play games. Pat was a graduate student (Charlotte was too) and made $250/month. Pat laundered the team uniforms and drove the van that took them to their games. Meanwhile, the men enjoyed scholarships, travel budgets, high-paid coaches.

When Harriet went to the women's Final Four in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan in 1980, Tennessee lost the title game in an event that has little in common with today's tournaments – fans could walk into the small gym and purchase a ticket on the spot, while music was furnished by local high school pep bands.

It's been so fun and exciting for us to watch the progress of women's basketball over the last decades, and especially Pat Summitt and the Tennessee Lady Vols. Last night as we watched them play in the Elite Eight, it felt like it could be the end of Pat's career as Tennessee Head Coach.

But her influence will live on and on an on. Pat Summitt has done so much to crush the gender hierarchy in sports. There are millions of women across the world whose athletic opportunities are the legacies of Pat Summitt's tireless dedication, hard work, humor, and brilliance.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Has their personal sexual issues motivated hierarchy-conservators to hold on to their hierarchies during in the last 50 years of fast change? In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Nancy Cohen traces decades of a counterrevolution, a backlash, to the 1960's sexual revolution.

While it seems like Hi-Cons are obsessed with power and greed, maybe deep down they are just trying to resolve their personal sexual issues.

They are trying to drag us into their outdated hierarchies – predictable of those on top – as forty years later, we're still debating birth control and other issues focused on sexual roles and rights. If you haven't seen this video of Virginia legislator Dave Albo, go to the youtube link below to why hierarchies are so outdated that they can't survive anymore.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

We are happy to see that the Oregon state education board is revisiting a possible ban on the use of American Indian school mascots. If you're having trouble understanding why the schools need to change their mascots, maybe a role reversal will help.

In a hierarchical role reversal, the higher group takes on the role of the lower, while the lower group plays the part usually played by the higher. We imagine the same scene played over again, however this time with roles switched.

What do you think would happen if: In autumn and winter, tens of thousands of fans pile into stadiums to cheer the Washington Whiteskins football team. The team mascot, a priest in a black robe and white clerical collar, performs Holy Communion on the field as a ritual to spur the rowdy fans and team to victory!

Friday, March 9, 2012

"They are views underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years" - that's how Kirk Cameron defended his saying that gay people are "detrimental to civilization."

We couldn't agree more about the 2,000 years! Hierarchies have been the underpinning of Western Civilization for two milleneums, including the 2,000 years since the Roman Christian church was founded.

"I can assuredly say that it's my life's mission to love all people," said Cameron. All people? Is Cameron willing to love all people only if they stay in their bottom role of being judged by the top as being of less value to civilization?

Cameron is illustrating one of the consistent and predictable attitudes of people who follow hierarchical religions – people at the top of their hierarchies believe that everyone needs to be like them in order to be acceptable.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Would Rush Limbaugh call Helen Keller a slut and a prostitute? Would he insist that he and his cronies be able to watch videos of Ms. Keller's sexual encounters?

Turn back a century.

One hundred years ago exactly, in 1912, Helen Keller – then one of the most recognized and celebrated women in the United States – spoke out publicly in favor of birth control, and in support of Margaret Sanger. Keller is cited as giving the movement some of its best publicity to date and furthering the national public debate.

The hierarchy conservators are getting desperate in their death struggle, as evidenced by the fact that they would pick a debate that's 100 years old. A whole century has passed them by!